Disenfranchised In Nevada

An anonymous reader writes "If you are a Democrat and you decided to register to vote in Nevada through non-official channels, you may have gotten disenfranchised by a private voter registration company. In this news article, it appears that employees of 'Voters Outreach of America' have been busy tearing up registration forms, specifically those from Democrats. The article indicates that hundreds to thousands of voter registrations may have been trashed. Unfortunately, the deadline to register to vote in Nevada has already passed."

Comments

!FP?

[temojen]

Why is this not on the Front Page?

Re:!FP?

[temojen]

Sorry, I'm from Canada, where we have sane election laws.

You have to mark your affiliation on your registration??? WTF?!

Who thought that was a good idea???

Re:!FP?

[jamie]

Because it is entirely unsubstantiated. All we know is two guys claimed it happened.

That is incorrect. As the article makes clear, the physical evidence that the "two guys" provided backs up their story.

You may not be convinced, but don't overstate your case. The article may not be proven yet, but it is clearly substantiated.

Re:!FP?

[Colazar]

This only became the case recently in CA, which had had a "blanket primary" (no political party declared, you can vote for anyone you want in the primaries, and the top vote-getter of each party advanced to the final election) until the Democratic and Republican parties took it to the Supreme Court and had it declared unConstitutional on the grounds that it violated their rights to freedom of assembly.

WA state had also had a blanket primary for a lot longer (70 years) and that just got invalidated in the last year.

Personally, I can agree with the reasoning of the court (only members of a group should be allowed to pick that groups representatives), but I think that it caused a bad policy decision. The advantage of a blanket primary is that it keeps you enfranchised on both the state and local level if you live in a Republican region of an overwhelmingly Democratic state (or vice versa). If the local Republicans always win, and the statewide Democrats always win, then having to pick a ballot by party automatically cuts you out of having a say in one set of those races.

Also, the studies that I saw that looked at "malicious cross-over voting" (Democrats voting for the kookiest Republican, so that the Republican would be sure to lose in the general election) concluded that when that happened, it was far out-weighed by voters crossing over to vote for what they thought was the opposite, the more centrist, least-objectionable candidate. (Which I think was the real problem that the national parties had with the blanket primaries--it tended to produce candidates who were less beholden to the party, and less partisan.)

BTW, I think anyone who crosses over to get the opposite party to nominate a crackpot, in order to help out their "real" party is playing with fire, anyway. Once someone makes it to the general election, anything can happen.

Here in WA, everyone was so disgusted with having to only take primary ballots from one party that there is an initiative to change the system to the Louisiana-style primary system, where everyone running for an office is on the same primary ballot, and the top two votegetters advance to the general election, regardless of their party affiliation. From what I can tell, it stands a very good chance of passing. (Personally, I think it would work better than the "declaring your party" primary we have now, and not as well as the blanket primary. But we shall see.)

Standards?

[ConceptJunkie]

There has got to be a way to standardize the election process in this country to help prevent this kind of fraud, or all the nonsense coming from the various kinds of voting machines.

How hard can it be to come up with a simple, standard solution. Why does every jurisdiction have to do things in so many different ways. We have California, who has done everything they can but offer free beer to get illegal immigrants to vote. We have Florida that uses all those weird voting machines (which ironically don't see to be a problem in other states). We have millions being spent on electronic voting that's about as secure as Al Sharpton at a KKK meeting.

I have no doubt that these things are largely caused by crooked individuals and not some vast conspiracy on the part of the political parties involved (regardless of the shameless fear-mongering to the contrary).

I would think the richest and most powerful country in the world could do better.

Re:Standards?

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

Of course there is. Just haul your lazy ass down to the county courthouse, ask for the elections department and register there.

So would you fill out a credit card application that someone on the street shoved in your face? I'm thinking that it's just silliness that people trusted someone to do the right thing here...

Re:Standards?

[hamburger lady]

I have no doubt that these things are largely caused by crooked individuals and not some vast conspiracy on the part of the political parties involved

seeing as how the guy who runs the company behind these shenanigans is funded by the RNC (and is the ex-head of a state republican committee), i'd look at the situation a little deeper.

Re:Standards?

[richie2000]

In Sweden, all citizens eligible to vote are automatically registered to vote. It's a non-issue. We're all registered. We get voter cards in the mail about a month before the election.

If you wish to wait until election day like most people do (instead of casting an absentee ballot at the local post office), you go to the designated polling place with your voter card and a photo ID, take a ballot with your candidate's/party's name on it (we normally have around ten different parties of which 5-6 or so make it into the parliament), put it in an envelope behind a screen, seal it and give it to the voting official who puts it in a strongbox while two of his colleagues (these are all local guys from different parties) watch. They then strike your name off the voter list and you're done. It's all very serious and very proper. Counting is done in parallell - again with three officials present at all times. We normally get the first solid results within hours after the last polling place closes with some of the absentee and overseas ballots being counted up to a week later.

If you want to vote in a different polling place, that's fine. If you want to vote from overseas - no problem. One person, one vote. No problems, no cheating, no confusion and we consistently get turnouts in the 80-90% range for our parliament elections.

To a Swede, it's inconcievable that the USA, one of the proudest democracies in the world, is unable to hold a general election that stands up to any kind of standard regarding voter integrity... Register for voting? 4711 different voting methods? Insane. You might as well use a pair of crooked dice to select the President.

There has to be a federal database of every citizen in the US, right? Use it for some good for once. Automatically remove all under-aged and other criteria you may want (taking away the opportunity for Jeb Bush to get rid of a bunch of left-wing hippie voters) and send voter cards to the rest. If you wish you can include ballots for all parties that got more than 1% in the last election in that letter and let the rest of the ballots be available at the polling place. Do not register party affiliation anywhere. Do not pass Go. Do not let anyone except a federally appointed multi-partisan voting commission interfere with this process, at any level at all.

It's just basic checks and balances, it's not like it's rocket science.

Non-party affiliated registration

[chitownIrish]

... is the answer. The requirement that you declare a party affiliation seems only to be a way of locking in the two-party system.

Thankfully not here...

[dman123]

I live in a state where there we do not register for a party affiliation, have open primaries, and can register the same day at the voting site. It is still amazing to me that consituents of states that do not have these three rights (yes, I said rights, not privledges) do not rise up and demand for it to be this way. The only reason I can imagine is that voters in Nevada and others have not had the experience of how easy it is to vote with these artificial burdens removed.

treason

[girth]

I don't care which side is involved, this is one of the most unamerican things you can do. This should be treated as treason.

This is another area where there needs to be a paper trail. These companies should be bonded and some sort of receipt should be issued to the voter that would allow one to either vote or allow them to file a protest and cast a vote after the fact. Any company found in fraud (anything above a normal error level) would loose their bond plus face criminal charges.

apparently oregon too

[joey_knisch]

http://www2.kval.com/x30530.xml?ParentPageID=x2649 &ContentID=x47627&Layout=kval.xsl&AdGroupID=x30530 Same company. This time in oregon. I hope these people pay for their crimes.

Re:List of this groups backers. MAJOR GOP SUPPORTE

[rev_sanchez]

A GOP funded organization stole the name from the real America Votes to help perpetuate this fraud. Aside from disenfranchising dozens? hundreds? thousands? of Democrats I think one of the biggest tragedies is that the real, non-partisan America Votes will be hurt by this. I don't blame you for being confused, that was the point.

link 1

link 2

Text:
(Oct. 12) -- Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.

Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected.

The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at Democrats. The focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes.

The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.

Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.

"We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me," said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.

Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.

So the people on those forms who think they will be able to vote on Election Day are sadly mistaken. We attempted to speak to Voters Outreach but found that its office has been rented out to someone else.

The landlord says Voters Outreach was evicted for non-payment of rent. Another source said the company has now moved on to Oregon where it is once again registering voters. It's unknown how many registrations may have been tossed out, but another ex-employee told Eyewitness News she had the same suspicions when she worked there.

It's going to take a while to sort all of this out, but the immediate concern for voters is to make sure you really are registered.

Call the Clark County Election Department at 455-VOTE orclick here to see if you are registered.

The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee. Similar complaints have been received in Reno where the registrar has asked the FBI to investigate.

Re:List of this groups backers. MAJOR GOP SUPPORTE

[jamie]

No, that's "America Votes." The Republican-headed effort to register Republicans and disenfranchise Democrats is called Project America Votes. The linked news story was confused, and you are confused, because the GOP-headed organization was misrepresenting itself as a nationally-known, reputable voter registration organization. Needless to say, the organization in question is not too happy about it, and is "in the process of pursuing all of [its] legal options."

Just when you thought the story couldn't get any scummier...

election day voter registration

[putch]

this wouldn't be an issue (or much less of one) if we'd scrap all of the hoops you need to jump through to vote. the time for election day voter registration is here. it's the fucking 21st century already. i can have pretty much any consumer item in the world (except duk nukem forever) shipped to me tommorrow, over the internet, but i have to mail in my form 25 days before the election? and 60! before a primary?

HAVA is going to require every state to maintain a centralized voter reg database. with such a system on-demand voting could mean:

1) no more voter reg deadlines. show up give them your name and you vote
2) vote from any poll site. can't make it back to your home before 9? just vote at the most convenient site. a voting kiosk will display the proper ballot for your election district
3) no over-voting. everyone gets one vote, no voting in two districts. in ny it is possible, though illegal, to register in many different counties, since they all keep their own records and dont share (at least not well enough).

See a pattern?

[rritterson]

(Disclaimer: I lean left)

-Democratic forms get tossed in the trash, but not Republican forms...
-It's Texas Republicans who are Gerrymandering in their redistricting efforts...
-Sinclair wishes to put an obviously anti Kerry Docuganda on TV...
-Flordia 2000 -- Black voters are disenfranchised by the thousands. Guess which way they lean?

Try as I might, I can only think of one example of such behavior from Democrats: Micheal Moore. However, Sinclair's decision eclipses Fahrenheit because Sony didn't tell all of it's theaters to pre-empt I,Robot to show Fahrenheit.

Now, I'm willing to concede I'm biased and that I just don't notice the deciept and trickery the left puts on. Can anyone reply to my post with a corresponding list of things Dems have done?

(No, rhetoric doesn't count- *every* candidate is full of hyperbolic BS)

Re:See a pattern?

[Sevn]

As a admitted capitalist, there is a MAJOR difference between F/911 and the other shamelessly political movies. F/911 made over 100 million dollars. It's a definite profit maker. There isn't anything that counters it that will generate even 10 percent of that massive haul. I think some people forget that. I know disney never will.